Please note that Microsoft will no longer sell Windows 7 or 8 to retailers or original equipment manufacturers(OEMs) because the two versions have reached their end of sales date.When a version of Windows reaches its end of sales date, it's a good time to think about upgrading.

However,since many retailers and OEM's have already bought or pre-installed the operating systems (7 and 8) on PCs,it means computers running these operating systems will still be available on the market for a while.Microsoft advises users to upgrade to Windows 8.1 which will come pre-installed on new original PCs.

End of Sales,is usually followed by End of Support after a period of one or two years.Therefore colleges/units within the university should plan on upgrading to Windows 8 or 8.1.

End of main stream support for Windows 7 was January 13,2015.However,the operating system will continue to receive updates/patches from Microsoft until January 14th 2020 and is therefore still usable.

Alternatively,user units can avoid or greatly reduce the licencing burdens and upgrades associated with proprietary software by embracing open source operating systems such as Ubuntu which is completely free and can run very well on any old, Windows XP-era hardware that you might still be using.

Users of Windows or Apple operating systems will have a bit of a learning curve getting used to the Ubuntu interface.However,there are a lot of training material available online-including a lot of videos. The key point here is the willingness to learn!